In which Cynthia Parks, Bill Hampton, and Andre Goldman discuss post convention vision, structure, and program, and particularly creating chapters.

[Author’s Note: This is the fifth excerpt from a work titled An Oral History of the Next American Revolution. This excerpt will also provide the substance for a forthcoming RevolutionZ episode titled, NAR 5: Initial Commitments. The oral version will include spontaneous interjections made by the host on hearing the material aloud. The hope is the episode will help to make plausible the possibility of winning a new world and to simultaneously provoke those who hear it to contribute to discussions about vision and especially strategy for social change.]

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Forming Chapters

Returning to RPS getting going, I assume, Bill, that as people left the initial convention the key next step was forming chapters. Was that so? And why?

Yes, when we left the convention we all knew that RPS success was going to depend on our having reliable, informed, working chapters with face to face trust and exploration. Cyber calls were nice but real contact mattered greatly. We hoped chapters would emerge in communities, on campuses, and in workplaces. We felt a chapter with ten members was okay, but one with forty or fifty members would be much better. We thought that a chapter just getting going, on reaching that larger scale, should as much as situations allowed divide into two—not by a nasty split, but by a friendly break, like a living cell dividing, so that each half could grow again and later divide again. In that way, on a campus, in a workplace, or in a community, there would be steadily more chapters, each with members in a particular and steadily more focussed region or area but all tied to the rest. The whole would become a kind of evolving organism.

A few people might initially constitute a chapter for a whole community, workplace or college. Then, that single chapter would reach forty members, say, and divide into two chapters—each serving half the community, workplace, or campus. Then it would happen again, and again. In time there would be chapters for neighborhoods instead of one for a whole town or city, and chapters for dorms instead of one for a whole campus, and chapters for divisions of a workplace, instead of one for the whole plant. As we got more chapters, we hoped each would remain entwined with its parent, child, and sibling chapters, so that many chapters in a community, or workplace, or campus, would together help constitute an assembly for the whole unit—and then, as time went on, we could also have a federation of those assemblies.

It was an ambitious picture, obviously, and there is no doubt that dreams often run way ahead of reality. But then that was the whole point. RPS wasn’t asking what modest thing we might perhaps accomplish and celebrate as our achievement and then go home to celebrate a job well done. RPS was asking what are the big things we must accomplish as part of moving toward a whole new society.

We knew chapters were essential so that the organization would have face to face venues of participation. Chapters were needed to pursue program in concert with one another as well as to directly serve members. Without chapters, RPS would be a cyber organization, with only tenuous connections among its members. With chapters, as long as we could develop them in a way ensuring the tight connection of each to the rest, RPS could be personal and direct, and also widespread and participatory.

Can you tell us what the steps were, and what difficulties occurred?

It was different for different cases. I left the convention and within a week or two hosted a group of friends. I was still in college and at a dinner party for the purpose I spoke about the convention. I also handed out materials summarizing the nature of RPS, and I urged those who were interested to return for another session a week later. In the meantime, I urged people to discuss the ideas and read the materials, and I offered to answer questions that might come up.

That part was relatively easy, actually. At our second session, there were twelve of us. We even thought of calling ourselves the dirty dozen before realizing the name would make no sense as we grew. In any event, we began figuring out how we would proceed. We decided on meetings once a week – on Sunday nights. The meetings would be for dinner and we would rotate who had responsibility for bringing food. We also decided we would have an optional cultural/entertainment gathering each week. At each Sunday meeting someone would be responsible for proposing what the cultural gathering would be—perhaps a movie, picnic, or playing ball together, or whatever.

Beyond those essential steps for us to get to know, enjoy, and trust each other, we also started talking about what we could do. Here there was often tension. Some thought the thing to do was to get good, ourselves, at presenting RPS views and vision to then reach out and grow. Others thought we should become active, either joining an already developed campaign on campus, or initiating a new one.

If I remember right instead of endlessly arguing and as a result accomplishing neither aim while burning ourselves out in dispute, we quickly compromised. When we had twenty people, less than one new person per current person, we would continue recruiting, but we would also establish our own campaign to simultaneously pursue. So that is what we did.

Because momentum was building in many places, it took only fifteen days or so, if I remember right, to get to twenty members. And indeed, we reached forty members, amidst considerable campus turmoil from our first two campaigns in just another few weeks, and at that point we made ourselves into two chapters, and we just kept growing. 

What were the two campaigns you settled on? And how did you get people to work well together when they hadn’t seriously known one another earlier and had so many differences among them?

The campaigns were a campus version of the arms manufacturers boycott that was growing nationally, plus our own campaign to rid our campus of violence against women and racist attacks on minorities, which centered, at first, on the behavior of some fraternities and sororities.

Developing trust had two facets, I think. On the one hand, we paid close attention to actually getting to know one another and to sharing experiences. I think for most of us, and it was more so rather than less so as time went along, the chapter and later chapters became not only the locus of our political hopes and activism, but also a main site of our social lives but did so without becoming isolated and while constantly reaching out. It was social but not insular. Once there were more chapters, we created our own intramural sports leagues, had regular open parties, and held classes taught by members who had special skills or knowledge. These classes included everything from learning tennis, say, to becoming a photographer or learning computer skills. We eventually even had painting classes and the assembly of chapters sponsored plays and street theatre, both for artistic and political aims. A nice thing was that whenever we branched out or took up a cause or developed anything new, we wrote it up and sent it to folks on other campuses, and then others did likewise. All this was pretty much without opposition, yet before long it provided a basis for very powerful campaigns.

But I should note, there was a danger in our social connections. We could have become insular. We could have become a campus group, content in its own virtues, happy in its own social life, and lacking the will and even the energy to reach out to those who disagreed with us. But this did not happen. From the start everyone agreed that building our chapters in ways which would not sustain themselves due to internal frustration and alienation would be insane. So we needed the social life commitments. But we also agreed that to become comfortable in our own little universe, getting insular and static because it was more pleasurable to revel in each other’s support and in our joyful activities than it was to go out and talk to people hostile to our beliefs, would consign our overall agenda to defeat for want of sufficient support, and would likely also turn us into less than the kind of people we sought to be. So we constantly gave lots of time to reaching out, and even our social events were always looking to get non RPS participants involved.

Perhaps most effective of all, we were sincere but also quite strategic about all of it. We approached groups and individuals who we felt could in turn broaden our potentials most. In fact, when we had only fifteen members we literally made lists of campus individuals to reach out to, people very popular and visible in various constituencies on campus including big living groups, sports teams, and the fraternities, and we assigned people to specifically reach out to each one, and to keep at it, until success.

Andre, were your experiences like Bill’s? Did you try to get a chapter going too?

Not at first. I was a bit of a loaner. I was deeply into RPS, I engaged with the convention, and so on, but my history made me quite a bit less social and even shy, I guess, once the discussion turned away from politics or anything intellectual to matters of daily life and social interactions. So I didn’t jump into trying to form a chapter. Rather, I was someone who others occasionally came to to recruit to a chapter they were trying to create.

I was an older graduate student at the time, and at first I felt like between trying to write about RPS ideas and even contribute to them, and also trying to teach my course allotment and attend my classes giving time to a chapter would be a burden that I couldn’t manage. But, after some prodding I couldn’t say no. How could I be writing up ideas for RPS yet ignore chapter building? I couldn’t. So reluctantly, I signed on. And much to my surprise I not only benefitted, and hopefully contributed, but I enjoyed it.

The chapter I joined, and remember this is still the early days of RPS, and on our campus we were still quite tiny and barely known, did indeed progress much like Bill described. Indeed, I even had responsibility for reaching out to the then president of the inter fraternity conference on our campus, and surprisingly we got on great and he joined. Thereafter chapter folks were welcomed to talk to gatherings in each fraternity.

I think we should be clear about something. This was not typical of past organizational efforts. Far more likely would be an unfolding situation of constant tension, aggravation, overwork, and alienation—which is why far more often organizations fairly quickly stopped growing and even started declining. Obviously RPS is alive and well, verging on winning a new society, so even in the early days there must have been attributes, commitments, features, and even lucky happenstances, that led to such success. I think one of those, maybe even the main one, was the way the chapters grew and had a healthy tone and style about them.

Once you were chapter building, what was your own approach? What problems did you see and how were they overcome?

My own priority had to do with internal education and external outreach which I saw as intimately related. And I was also deeply affected by what I thought was a main problem we had, which was a lack of confidence to engage with other students, particularly ones who didn’t already largely agree with us. We needed to hear them, relate to them, and, in time, one hoped—and it did prove true—welcome them into RPS.

To be able to do that really well, I thought we needed to prepare ourselves. So in addition to all that Bill mentioned, I made it my concern to work hard on establishing a kind of school for RPS organizing. It would work to prepare folks to go out and organize effectively on campus. And, for at least a subset of those involved—and the more the better—it would also prepare folks to ready others to do likewise.

In a sense, the idea was for those doing the helping and teaching to prepare those who they were engaging with to become the ones doing the helping and teaching. So we worked on that, and as Bill said, made known what we were doing and why, and how it was going, and before long the internal education priority developed into a kind of activist curriculum and spread not only to chapters on campuses, but with needed adaptations, also to chapters in communities and workplaces.

It seems like there was no one right or accepted approach to getting a chapter going? Was that true? Did you require attendance? Did you have dues?

You are quite right, there was no single anointed approach. And, indeed, even when we had hundreds and then thousands of chapters, there was still no one right way to operate. Our chapter did urge attendance at the meetings we held weekly, and also at one group event a week, which was a lot to ask for. On the other hand, since there was no penalty other than being rejected from the group for really excessive violation, it was more a matter of having a norm and trusting that folks would try to respect it.

Chapters evolved as they matured and grew. Chapters also were different in different places and times. Daycare, where relevant, for example, came later. So did collecting dues to help pay costs of preparing documents, holding events, and so on.

One problem Bill didn’t mention was resistance to breaking up chapters. People in a chapter often became very tight with one another, really good friends. And we spent considerable time relating to our chapters. So when a chapter reached forty members, and it was clearly time to divide in half, for many of us it was a bit traumatic. Personally, we wanted to stick with our mates. Politically, we knew growth was essential. To avoid hassles we settled on a mechanical approach. We conceived a rather arbitrary line through the campus and moved it around until we had 20 of us on one side and 20 on the other side, and then that was it, the east and west chapters were born, and so was an assembly of two chapters. Later we had north, south, east, and west, and so our campus assembly had four chapters. Then we decided it was too uncreative so chapters adopted names they liked. I remember the first named chapter I was in was called Willy, chapter Willy, can you imagine? A bit whimsical. And for the life of me I don’t remember why. Before long, there were enough chapters so they were in dorms, and then often there was more than one chapter in a dorm. And I think roughly the same kinds of developments occurred in communities and workplaces too, albeit for many obvious reasons, more slowly than in colleges.

One of the best aspects of this, besides that it led to constant growth, was on our personalities. It used to be that when a left group formed, not only organizations but, say, a campus movement, it would grow for a time and then become ingrown. Members would become very entwined and even start, very often, to dress and talk alike. It would become more or less a sub community on a campus, sort of like a tribe with its own logic and patterns, and too often quite defensive about preserving each. It would stop growing, in such cases, when it reached a stable workable size and was more inclinedto maintain itself as a community then to grow itself as part of a movement. Our approach to chapter building countered that tendency. You regularly dealt with new folks, and growth indicated success, not survival. We had community, but it was outward facing and growth seeking. However, I do have to admit that when you form an organization and share vision and strategy and work and socialize together, you do tend to start to sound alike. In fact, I bet there will be some who read your interviews and wonder, how come the interviewees had different focuses and lessons they shared, but roughly one voice they spoke with? Well, i’ll bet it isn’t you editing them, but, instead intense membership in the organization doing that.

Interesting, I guess we will see. But what about the flip side of getting social with each other? What about a member disliking another member, or even feuding with another?

Some people like to think that if you are on the side of justice and you are courageous, all will be absolutely wonderful. But, as you clearly realize, that is quite wrong. There are still disputes and jealousies. All manner of tensions can arise. No one likes everyone. We all find some people annoying or even unbearable.

So was this a problem for chapters? Yes and no. When a chapter was small, disputes and tensions could be deadly. Suppose you have five members and two don’t like each other. No one can avoid it. It is there all the time. It not only infects how the two who are at odds feel, but most likely all five. Whose side am I on, whose side are you on? What did you say? Needles and pins.

When you get up to around twenty members, it is easier for everyone to do their thing and for those at odds to avoid conflict. And when chapters break up to form two from one, of course those at odds with each other can be separated.

So the question you asked became for us what should we do when two people at odds couldn’t separate and couldn’t accommodate? There was no perfect answer. Different choices would happen in different cases. The contending parties might just back off until there were more members and they could split. Or they might make themselves behave. Whatever, it was never pleasant. Sometimes it would even derail a group. I wish I could tell you there was a simple one approach fits all cases solution, but I don’t think there was. Sometimes it wasn’t a big deal. Other times the people were both highly active, even important, and their differences were unbridgeable, perhaps because of both, perhaps felt more so by one than the other.

Were you ever in a situation like that?

Yes, a couple of times. Once the split of distance solved it, at least as much as possible. The other time we both had to control ourselves for quite awhile, which was no fun, but better than the alternative. You know as bad as it could get when, say, it was long time friends who fell into dispute, or worse when it was about love life—there was a still more difficult dynamic when parents and each other, or parents and their children, or two siblings were at odds. After all, being part of the same lineage doesn’t mean people are going to never disagree, or even that they won’t become consistently hostile. On the contrary that kind of tension and incompatibility happens quite often for all kinds of reasons. In an ongoing situation like RPS, the most troubling, depressing, and sometimes disruptive situation was when the difference that caused people to split was precisely about RPS itself—whether it was a difference about how much time should be given to RPS, or even about being positive about it at all.

Twenty years into the experience, I still don’t think anyone can sensibly say here is how to deal with a relative or spouse who disagrees with your involvement in a way that will inevitably turn out well. RPS creates a very strong community of support, and that helps, but when your spouse, child, parent, brother, or sister is beyond your reach and opposes your choices, that is hard to navigate no matter what kind of support you have.

Do you think there were other new aspects of chapter priorities compared to prior efforts that contributed to later success?

Besides outreach, participation, and the rest? Probably—I am not sure. After Trump’s election and two defeats, and later right through to the first convention, there was a lot of soul searching. Well, actually, at first there was a lot of finger pointing as peopleblamed possible problems in society or in everyone other than themselves and their closest allies. But in time we started to look in the mirror. I am not sure it was your intent with this question but I remember four areas of concern that incredibly troubled me.

First, as an anti sexist feminist I looked at Trump’s female vote and I asked myself, what did movements do wrong over months, years, and literally a half century during which we had been trying to develop feminist awareness and commitment? Why had five decades of efforts left society with so many women, and men, who did not cry out at Trump’s obviously misogynistic intentions? Did our organizing polarize away potential allies too often? Did we attract potential allies, but convey insufficient clarity and commitment for them to stay? Were our feminist values, aims, or methods flawed? Did anyone believe that in five decades we could not have done better? And if we could have done better, how?

Did it follow that rather than bemoaning the choice of women and men who voted for Trump, we should ask what we ought to change about how we talk about, make demands about, and organize about gender so we attract rather than repel those who don’t initially agree?

Being morally and socially right for decades about society’s gender injustices had won a lot but it hadn’t created an unstoppable tide against sexism. Did we need to say more about medium and long run goals? Did we need to seek feminist outcomes in ways that put off fewer potential allies? Could we find ways to make uncompromising, comprehensive demands about gender that didn’t polarize away non misogynist men, and that accounted for other social phenomena like class and race?

Second, as an anti racist internationalist I looked at the admittedly small numbers of low or modest income blacks and Latinos confused about Trump and I wondered how any could exist. And then, how could his support in those constituencies grow over time? I looked at the not very firm support from Blacks for Sanders—which was part of the 2016 election turning out as it did—and I wondered how that too could exist. And while I certainly understood considerable racism still existing in various white constituencies, I looked and saw the relative lack of fury at Trump’s racism, Islamophobia, and immigrant bashing, and I wondered, again, how can that exist?

Had decades of anti racist organizing not tried often or energetically enough to reach whites who resisted the appeals? Had our movements preached overwhelmingly only where we already had a receptive audience? Had our messages too often failed due to their tone or substance alienating those we wanted to reach? Had anti-racist communities pursued too narrow an understanding? Had anti-racist values, aims, or methods been flawed or miscommunicated?

Did anyone believe that in over a half century we could not have done better? And f we could have done better, how? Did it follow that rather than bemoaning the choices of whites who voted for Trump, we should ask what we ought to change about how we make demands and organize about race so we attract rather than repel those who don’t initially agree?

Being morally and socially right for decades about racism’s ills had won a lot but hadn’t created an unstoppable tide against racism. Perhaps we needed to say more about medium and long run goals. Perhaps we needed ways to seek anti-racist outcomes that put off fewer potential allies and pulled others more sustainably into anti racist commitment. Could we find a way to talk and make uncompromising, comprehensive demands about race that didn’t polarize away white people and ignore other social phenomena like class and gender?

Third, as an anti capitalist I looked at a narcissistic billionaire bully attracting tens of millions of working class votes and I wondered how that could exist. How could five decades of anti-capitalist organizing leave so many workers susceptible to Trump’s rhetoric and posturing? Was it something about our substance? Did we not sufficiently address what working people feel and experience in ways they would relate to? Was it something about our approach? Did we give off hostility toward working people quite like what they daily encountered from authority figures in hospitals, courts, and workplaces?

Working people were furious at their plight yet anti-capitalists had little connection to and often even insufficient empathy for workers’ rising fury. What did we have to change about how we talked about, made demands about, and organized around class and economy to reach those who didn’t yet agree? Did anyone believe that in a half century we could not have done better? Rather then bemoaning the choice of working class people who voted for Trump, shouldn’t we ask what we ought to change about how we make demands and organize about class and economy so we could attract rather than repel those who don’t agree?

Being morally and socially initially right for five decades about capitalism’s horrors hadn’t created an unstoppable tide against class oppression. Perhaps we needed to say more about medium and long run goals. Perhaps we needed ways to seek anti-capitalist outcomes that put off fewer potential allies and pulled others more sustainably into anti classist commitment. Could we talk and make uncompromising, comprehensive demands about economy in ways that didn’t polarize away workers, and that didn’t ignore other social phenomena like gender and race? Was the issue part style, part substance, with both owing to inadequately understanding the situation of workers and being too dismissive of them, and perhaps even aspiring to be above them, both in the movement and in a new economy?

Finally, fourth, as an activist, I looked at progressive and left writing over the year 2016, the election year, and I saw a lot of people saying that Trump has a silver lining, Trump will galvanize us, Trump is just another ruling class lackey same as the rest, so that not voting in contested states or voting for Stein in contested states was a wise choice. I wondered how the callousness such views displayed toward those who would most suffer Trump’s fascistic inclinations and ecological madness could exist. I wondered how such confusion about the implications of movements trying to seek radical progress against a right wing thug rather than against a liberal albeit corporate and war complicit woman could exist.

How could such views exist for radicals immersed in left literature and activism? What had those of us who knew better done wrong that had caused us to fail to reach so many commentators who offered such suicidal views? How could months much less years or decades of involvement in radicalism have left so many thinking such thoughts? I wondered what had been wrong with the accumulated literature and practice of all the left’s many parts taken in sum, such that a good many left commentators and incredibly many young radicals could be highly versed in all that radical output, and yet nonetheless hold the views many had been propounding.

I think in feeling these concerns I was typical of many, and even most, who initially became involved with RPS. So I think the import of the above many questions, repeatedly arising, and activist desires to deal with them in our practical choices fueled much that was right about chapter building. And I guess I would say that that orientation to correct our own faults was an added factor in RPS success, a tone and an intent, if you will, on top of other choices I have already described.

Convention Vision

Cynthia, you attended the first convention. Can you summarize the initial vision the convention adopted?

Our visionary proposal for politics was that the organization should seek a new type of government that facilitates all citizens participating in decision-making. It’s choices should be transparent. Ask much as possible, it should convey to all citizens a self-managing say proportionate to effects on them.

We proposed that new government should utilize grassroots assemblies, councils, or communes. It should include direct participation by plebiscites as well as by representation and delegation where that would be better. We favored choosing among voting options such as majority rule, two thirds, or consensus, as means to further self management.

We favored maximum civil liberties, including freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and organizing political parties. More innovative, we argued that new government should expressly facilitate and protect dissent. It should promote diversity so individuals and groups would freely pursue their own goals consistent with not interfering with the same rights for others. It should fairly, peacefully, and constructively adjudicate disputes and violations of norms and laws. The aim should be justice and rehabilitation.

If you look at that, which is roughly verbatim, I believe, you can see how much we were thinking not only about expressing clear long term goals for what new institutions should achieve for future citizens, but also about establishing priorities for our own future. After all, we were saying this is for society, it is for when we win change, but to get there, this is also for us, now, in our own organizations. You can also see the extent to which it really isn’t particularly complicated. A few basic values and some thought about how social institutions could further them were the bedrock of it. You could also see that it didn’t arise in a vacuum but incorporated lessons from the past, from movements in the U.S. and around that world, as well.

We urged that new government should support all community members contributing to solving problems. It should ensure that no political hierarchies privilege some citizens over others. We proposed values and aims, but only a vague scaffolding of means.

The then not too distant Sanders campaign had legitimated the idea of political revolution, meaning transforming how politics was conducted. We mostly gave its proposals more reach and substance. But beyond what Sanders had begun for politics, we went on to address all key sides of life.

So, our proposals said we also seek future economy in which no individuals or groups own resources, workplaces, or workplace infrastructure, so that  ownership wouldn’t harmfully distort anyone’s decision making influence or share of income.

We argued that future workers who work longer or harder or at more onerous conditions doing socially valued labor should earn proportionately more, but that there should be no payment according to property, bargaining power, or even the value of personal output. Those unable to work should receive average income nonetheless.

We proposed that workers should have a say in decisions proportionate to effects on them, sometimes by majority rule, sometimes by consensus, or by other arrangements.

We proposed each worker should enjoy work conditions and responsibilities suitable for him or her to be sufficiently confident, informed, and knowledgeable to participate effectively in decision making. Each should have a socially average share of empowering tasks via suitable new designs of work. There should be no corporate division of labor giving about a fifth of workers predominantly empowering tasks and four fifths mainly rote, repetitive, and obedient tasks.

And finally, we proposed that for allocation there should be decentralized cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs accomplished by workers and consumers councils. There should be neither market competition nor top-down planning.

You are remembering almost verbatim, yet this was almost twenty years ago. How do you explain that? But more, surely some of this was contentious even in the group working on the proposal. How did you resolve your differences before sending it out?

I can’t say I have it verbatim because of impressive memory. Rather, I figured this would come up in the interview, and I didn’t want to misrepresent, so I went back and re-familiarized myself with the way it was stated then. But the truth is, it isn’t really memory that underpins this, like you might remember some lone fact, or who wore what, when, or who said what, when. Instead it is understanding. It is the difference between memorizing a math proof and being able to derive it. Our economic aims sought to implement our values. You hold the values, you understand institutions, you arrive at the aims. You don’t have to remember them, so to speak, because you can simply argue their merits yourself.

But you are right that some of it was quite contentious. Most of what we proposed came from prior efforts by other people who had only had some very limited organizational success. We adapted a framework that preexisted our effort in pretty much the same way we hoped that the convention would work with, adapt, and refine, what we offered.

What we had most trouble settling on were the parts where the wording slid from broad guidelines about a better future into statements about more specific ways to fulfill the guidelines. For example, there was long discussion about what later was overtly advocated as balanced job complexes, and quite a lot of discussion, as well, about new allocation, once we ruled out markets and central planning. The controversy was should we outline the main points of new institutional aims for division of labor and allocation, or should we confine ourselves to indicating only what good new institutions should accomplish in value terms, in moral terms, without saying what new features would let them do so?

If you look, we mostly did the former for almost all details and even much that was broad and general. But we took a more specific stance including new institutional features for division of labor and markets. The reason was at least in my mind, fear.

Fear? Fear of what?

For almost all aspects of vision we thought there were no severe fault lines of disagreement among leftists who would attend the convention. Free and open discussion of most matters would reach good results. Needed refinements could happen later, within the organization, rather than as a kind of precondition for the organization getting started. But after much discussion we agreed that attitude to division of labor and markets were issues that were not just fundamental, as so many issues are, but also vastly less addressed up to that point. We thought discussion of such issues were much more subject to biases from old unexamined habits. We thought such discussions could be sidetracked by uninformed assumptions, lack of attention, and class bias and contending class interests even among many of our attendees. For those reasons, we thought we needed to be more explicit about those matters. Later there was a different guideline. If we thought—and until we thought otherwise should it happen—that some particular choice of institution was necessary as in, without it, the vision would fall apart, then about that institution we would be as detailed as we thought necessary to get the job done. If, on the other hand, some choice was just one of various possible ways to accomplish a needed result, we would not get into details. So, for us there was a core of necessary, defining features, and a scaffold of possible details that people would, in time, get built on top of that core. The possible features, when there were many viable and worthy options, we left open ended. The core scaffold, not including optional components, we got explicit about.

People who might attend the first convention if we required no prior agreement about such matters as basic class relations were not likely to be well steeped in and might even resist really understanding the roots and implications of coordinator class interests and how they could silence working class needs and potentials. For race, gender, and other key aspects of focus, leftists who would attend hoping to create a new and revolutionary organization would have differences, of course, but given the strength of anti racist and feminist organizing, we felt if we agreed on broad values, none of our operational differences would be so severe as to subvert potentials for worthy unity and clarity in those facets of activism. However, around underlying issues related to class hierarchy, we felt getting a result able to ward off tendencies toward coordinator class bias and rule depended on our being more explicit about institutional solutions at least for division of labor and allocation.

Can we get the rest of the initial convention proposal on record here. What about the rest of the visionary aspect?

We proposed new gender and kin relations that would not privilege certain types of family formation over others, but would instead actively support all types of families consistent with society’s other broad norms and practices. We proposed that living units should promote children’s well-being and affirm society’s responsibility for all its children, including affirming the right of diverse types of families to have children and to provide them with love and a sense of rootedness and belonging.

We proposed to minimize or even eliminate age-based permissions, preferring non-arbitrary means for determining when an individual is ready to participate in economic, political or other activities, as well as to receive benefits or shoulder responsibilities. We proposed to respect marriage and other lasting relations among adults as religious, cultural, or social practices, but to reject them as a way to gain financial benefits or social status.

We proposed to respect care giving as a valuable function and to utilize diverse means to ensure equitable burdens and benefits. We proposed that our kinship vision should affirm diverse expressions of sexual pleasure, personal identity, and mutual intimacy while ensuring that each person honor the autonomy, humanity, and rights of others. It should provide diverse, empowering sex education, including legal prohibition against all non-consensual sex.

You can again see throughout the kinship formulation that the vision was mostly guidelines and values, not specifics about institutions. We provided a skeleton that could provide guidance and orientation to later lead toward more specifics about key institutions. This was in tune with our desire to leave precision—not to say perfection—for after the chapter members had better means to participate and had more experience with and time to consider the issues at hand. The innovation of our initial kinship vision wasn’t really the substance which had all existed here and there before. It was bringing all the facets together. And it was sharing them, and urging that we all needed to relate to the whole picture, not just one part or another, and recognizing that there was no one right choice of details for everyone.

We also proposed that new cultural and community relations should ensure people freely have multiple cultural and social identities. We urged providing the space and resources necessary for people to positively express their cultural beliefs and habits. We urged recognizing that which personal commitments are most important to any particular person at any particular time depend on that person’s situation and assessments.

We proposed that new cultural relations should explicitly recognize that basic rights and values exist regardless of cultural allegiances. All people deserve self management, equity, solidarity, and liberty. While society protects all people’s right to affiliate freely and seeks to foster diversity, society should also affirm that such core values, if not their exact means of implementation, are universal.

We proposed, also, that new cultural relations should guarantee free entry and exit to and from all cultural communities, including affirming that communities that have free entry and exit can be under the complete self determination of their members so long as their policies and actions don’t conflict with society’s basic values.

We proposed that international relations should extend societal commitments beyond national borders. Internationalism should replace colonialism and neo-colonialism. New internationalist relations should steadily diminish economic disparities in countries’ relative wealth and protect cultural and social patterns interior to each country from external violation. Nations should facilitate internationalist globalization in place of corporate globalization.

And, finally, organizers also proposed that new ecological relations should account for the full ecological (and social/personal) costs and benefits of both short and long term economic and social choices, so future populations are able make informed choices about levels of production and consumption, duration of work, self reliance, energy use and harvesting, husbandry, pollution, climate policies, conservation, and consumption as part of their freely made decisions about future policies.

New environmental relations should foster a consciousness of ecological connection and responsibility so that future citizens can freely decide their policies regarding animal rights, vegetarianism, or other policies that transcend sustainability and even husbandry, consistent with ecological preferences and with social and economic aims.

It was so much. It was so dense. Even here, now, long since familiar with it and with extensions that took it further, and even now summarizing it, it still weighs heavy. Was that a problem?

Sure, of course it was, and as you imply, I bet it will be a problem for many who read this interview. But concision isn’t the only virtue when communicating. You also have to convey important subject matter. And sometimes that entails using more words simply because there is more to convey. Sometimes communication takes more time and effort, that is, without which there isn’t enough substance to matter or misinterpretation is too likely. We could just describe glorious moments, emotions, provide a “remember that” type verbal picture of high points alternating with personal pathos about low points without providing underlying thoughts, but is that better? It can sound more exciting, I guess, and less demanding, but is that more valuable?

At any rate, you can see that while we covered many topics in some depth, we were very clear about not telling future citizens what they should choose during their lives. We wanted only to attain a setting which would enable future citizens to make their own choices however they decide.

And you can also see that what later emerged and became the RPS vision as we now know it, even twenty years after the founding convention, has indeed met the standards we set. The broad values and aims have barely altered though considerably more institutional substance has been added. Learning through experiment and in campaigns and via our own institutions has advanced our clarity, but it wasn’t smooth sailing to get where we are all these years later.

Can you summarize what the main complexities of un-smooth sailing were?

It wasn’t so much arriving at good ideas. It was arriving at good ideas and not having them subvert others doing so as well and it was having improvements continue. The hard part was holding a view and not becoming sectarian about it. It was holding a view that typically percolated into existence via a long path, and not acting as though anyone who didn’t yet agree with the view was, on that account, either a moron or an enemy. It was not forgetting that maybe a month earlier, or a year earlier, or at any rate at some point, we who now held the new view didn’t hold it. And it was holding a vision but realizing that dismissing policies in the present by saying they aren’t yet our full vision—we want everything all at once or nothing—was a surefire way to get nothing. We had to determine if current choices led toward preferred future goals, not if they were already those goals. 

We were all people who had lived in contexts that nurtured in people morally and operationally horrible habits of mind and judgement. I always find it strange when a radical or revolutionary says how bad social relations and institutions are, but then acts as though that doesn’t affect the probability that our own views are less insightful and beneficial than they ought to be.

Racism is deadly. All radicals confidently and rightly say it distorts the views of racists. Few admit it impacts those who suffer the indignities and violence of racial denigration. The same holds for sexism and classism. We say they imprint all kinds of harmful beliefs and habits on the personalities, values, and ideas of sexist or classist men or on owners or coordinators. And it’s true. But we largely ignore that these social ills can also distort the intellectual reflexes of oppressed people.

I am not proposing ridiculous posturing or exaggerated guilt. I am talking about soberly realizing that one ought to be open to continually re-assessing one’s views and choices, rather than quick to assert their priority. We have had to and continue to need to walk a fine line between being over confident and over diffident, and this has made the RPS journey far from smooth.

I remember being gently but also forcefully talked with, sympathetically, constructively, but also unyieldingly, about inclinations of my own to judge people as if they had to immediately know what it took me years to learn. And I remember having to overcome my disinclination to consider refinements of views I held. I also remember sitting with others, where I was one of those doing the intervening. None of this was easy. I remember lying in bed at night, wondering, had I been unfair to others? Had I been inflexible? Or were the others avoiding responsibility and clinging to past identities? Each was possible. Each could be the case. Each did occur. It wasn’t easy to navigate the complexities.

Organizational Proposals

Andre, what about proposals for the organization itself?

As much as personal choices were central to outcomes, we also knew that the setting in which we each operated and the structures we each inhabited would impact what our choices were. We knew a new project wouldn’t accomplish much without a well developed institutional foundation. People had to aspire to and achieve exemplary personal choices, but we would fail to do that if we operated in a context that propelled the opposite.

We proposed that RPS structure and policy should be regularly updated and adapted but should always seek to be internally classless and self-managing. We urged that no minority that was initially disproportionately equipped with needed skills, information, and confidence, such as those of us who were taking the most initiative at the outset or those who had long experience should be permitted to establish a formal or an informal decision-making hierarchy. We should not leave less prepared or less experienced members to merely follow orders and perform rote tasks.

The organization should strive to implement the self management norm that “each member has decision making say proportional to the degree they are affected.” It should guarantee members’ rights to organize dissenting “currents” and it should guarantee those “currents” full rights of democratic debate plus resources needed to develop and present their views.

The organization should literally celebrate internal debate and dissent. It should make room, as possible, for contrary views to exist and be tested alongside preferred views.

National, regional, city, and local chapters should respond to their own circumstances and implement their own programs but not interfere with the shared goals and principles of the organization or with other chapters addressing their own situations.

The organization should provide extensive opportunities for members to participate in organizational decision making including deliberating with others to arrive at well-considered decisions. It should implement mechanisms for assuring that decisions get carried out correctly.

It should provide transparency regarding all actions by elected or delegated leaders. It should impose a high burden of proof for secreting any agenda, whether to avoid repression or for any other reason. It should provide a mechanism to recall leaders or representatives who members believe did not adequately represent them. It should provide ample means to peacefully and constructively resolve internal disputes.

This is getting very long-winded…

I know. I feel it too. But would you rather I leave out stuff that matters? Building a new organization to try to revolutionize society isn’t a small undertaking. I could just note the high points, or the guiding aims, but if you want to record what has mattered, well, more than high points mattered. Making a revolution is not a pile of Tweets.

So we also quite explicitly proposed that the organization should apportion empowering and disempowering tasks to participants to ensure that no individuals control the organization by having a relative monopoly on information or levers of daily decision-making. Members should have to actively participate in the life of the organization including taking collective responsibility for its policies. Along with preserving minority doubts and parallel undertakings, we should present, as much as possible, a unified voice in action.

We proposed, as well, that the organization should incorporate its members in developing, debating, and deciding on proposals. It should treat lack of participation as a serious problem to be addressed whenever it surfaces. The organization should set up internal structures that facilitate everyone’s participation including, when possible, offering childcare at meetings and events, finding ways to reach out to those who might be immersed in kinship or other duties, and aiding those with busy work schedules due to multiple jobs.

And the organization should monitor and respond to sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia as they manifest internally, including having diverse roles in projects suitable to people with different life situations.

As RPS emerged, we knew we were not yet even remotely perfect people. We knew we couldn’t escape centuries of mutilation in minutes of elation. So we knew that for all the above, we had to not let seeking unattainable immediate perfection erase steps leading toward progressively attaining excellence. We had to know where we were going and we had to want to get there as well as possible, but we also had to realize that it was not a day’s, a week’s, or a month’s journey. We had to always be being born into the above broad pattern, never dying away from it.

You can see, again, despite that there are so many ideas, despite that delivering them all at once, as with vision, was a massive load, still, we weren’t leaping into detailed specifics, or, for that matter, obscurantism rather than plain language. We knew we would have to come out of the convention with interim rules, and we knew that was likely to be hardest to do well and without rancor, but we didn’t want to narrow that discussion or go beyond what we felt was essential. Undertake enough, not too much.

You can also see in the structural proposals a prominent emphasis on the prioritization of participation, self management, and attention to structurally avoiding hierarchy. We were seeking positive activist results, for sure, but we were also quite consciously trying to avoid negative ones, including, in particular, sectarianism and authoritarianism. We wanted to create an organization that was constantly intent on rejuvenating itself, revolutionizing itself, and even replacing itself, if need be, but never on usurping to itself some kind of permanent power. At the convention a bit more specificity was added, and in ensuing months and years, especially with the emergence of active chapters, much more.

Program Proposals

That was vision and the organizational agenda, Cynthia, and even as the total was so much, I can also see how the things proposed were geared to guide an interim period without overstepping to determine too much at the outset. But what about program?

The proposal for consideration leading to the founding convention added to the above visionary and structural aspects that the organization’s broad program should be regularly updated and adapted and should always strive to incorporate seeds of the future in its present projects both in how members act and by building institutions that the organization could display as liberating alternatives to the status quo.

We proposed that the organization’s program should constantly grow membership among the class, cultural, and gender constituencies the organization sought to aid. It should learn from and seek unity with audiences far wider than the organization’s own membership. It should attract and empower younger members and help build diverse social movements and struggles.

It should seek changes in society for citizens to enjoy immediately and also and especially it should help establish by the terms of its victories and by the means used in its organizing a likelihood that citizens would pursue and win more change in the future. It should connect efforts, resources, and lessons from place to place, even as it recognizes that strategies suitable to different places often differ.

You can see in those aspects of the proposal our commitment to flexibility, our fear of sectarianism, and our attitude to reforms. These were arguably the three foundational desires most critical to RPS being not just another temporary and internally flawed effort, but a project with real staying power.

While no one would have explicitly argued that instead we should be inflexible, or be sectarian, or reject seeking current limited gains, in practice these matters, like many others, were in the past sometimes given lip service but not priority. We very consciously prioritized these matters right from the start.

How? Was there anything more concrete?

We proposed that organizational program should seek short term changes by its actions and by its support of larger movements and projects as its affected members decided, including addressing global warming, arms control, war and peace, the level and composition of economic output, agricultural relations, education, health care, income distribution, duration of work, gender roles, racial relations, media, law, legislation, etc.

But that was guidelines, not specifics…

We had two reasons. First, we meant the proposal to be timeless and knew that specific campaigns are contextual and time-bound. As context changes specific priorities change. And second, we felt specific program should emerge from discussion and debate, and we didn’t want to prejudge that process.

We also said that organizational program should provide financial, legal, employment, and emotional support to organization members so they could most easily negotiate the challenges and difficulties of participating in radical actions. Program should substantially improve the life situations of its members. It should enlarge their feelings of self worth, their knowledge, skills, and confidence, their mental, physical, sexual, and spiritual health, their social ties and leisure enjoyments.

Being part of seeking a new world would certainly take sacrifice and involve boredom and risk, but it shouldn’t imply foregoing well being in the current world. In a new world we should not only fulfill our potentials, but also dance and love and enjoy life.

It seems awfully broad…

Yes it was, and we knew a person might in theory agree to everything being proposed, yet in practice do nearly none of it. And that was obviously not our intent. We wanted the guidelines, however people might refine them, to provide a framework for talking about specific shared program and deciding on it.

Program, we added, should develop, debate, disseminate, and advocate truthful news, analysis, vision, and strategy among its members and in the wider society. It should develop and sustain needed media as well as means to pursue face to face communication. It should use educational efforts, rallies, marches, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, and direct actions to win gains and build movements. But it should place a very high burden of proof on utilizing even purely defensive violence, including cultivating a decidedly non violent attitude. And it should assess engaging in electoral politics case by case, including cultivating a very cautious electoral attitude.

You can see, again, that we proposed a kind of meta program, that we hoped would be pretty much timeless. It specified only the kind of things specific program in different places and times ought to accomplish and therefore just the kinds of demands and campaigns that should be adopted. It didn’t overextend by explicitly specifying universal demands and campaigns.

Easier support could have been had by indicating just a few key campaigns all would favor, perhaps, but efforts founded in such way, while of course valuable also tended to be very time bound and issue bound. We were looking to last.

Among those who prepared the proposals, did you have differences?

We who made the proposals, even after weeks of collective interactions, were, even as the convention date approached, divided on what we hoped the convention itself would do. Should it just ratify the proposals with some modifications. Or should it ratify with modifications but then also apply the proposals in the current moment to decide some specific campaigns for when people went back to their home regions?

I leaned toward the latter view and expected doing that to be a significant part of the gathering and that the specifics would pretty much emerge from a kind of meshing of the programmatic aims that had emerged earlier during the recent campaigns and programs and their aftermath like the program that Black Lives Matter activists had settled on, and that the massive women’s MeToo and the anti Trump organizers had proposed, and that the anti-genocide activism for Palestine had generated, and also what followed from other efforts about housing, wages, and the work week, with some of our own guidelines leading to adding some new features so the whole would better fulfill the emerging RPS norms, and, indeed, I think that is basically what happened.

Were you confident after preparing all the various proposals for the convention?

We looked at the pile we had generated, all the words, and we imagined people hearing a call for this gathering and getting all these vision, structure, and program proposals. We imagined their hearing that to usefully attend they should read the proposals and think about them, talk about them with others in person or online, and at least tentatively decide their attitude toward them. And imagining all that, we were far from confident. Some who we consulted called us crazy to ask for so much from people, especially since just attending was itself a big logistical and financial step. But there was motive in our madness.

We knew someone first hearing all this, I guess maybe like someone first reading this interview, couldn’t possibly quickly process it. It would require time and effort to process so many proposals and have opinions of them. But we felt that was okay. That was the right approach because we wanted to be clear we weren’t gathering people for a conference merely to celebrate one another. We weren’t seeking to merely display our numbers. The convention wasn’t an event to attend as a voyeur or to be able to say you had been there. The convention had to make serious choices based on carefully and respectfully addressing the issues at hand.

So we offered a lot of information before the convention despite that it was obviously a lot to send people and is even a lot to convey now, answering your questions, but we were committed that people who would attend should become clear about the issues beforehand and bring their proposed refinements with them. They should think for themselves.

We created a web site for people who would attend that included forums for discussing ideas in advance, and a place to post essays about the issues of concern. But we mainly urged that people should talk face to face with others, even as we provided means for online interaction. And I have to admit, there were moments when I thought it was asking too much of others, and too much of ourselves, as well. Why not have a few respected folks put forth something all could just follow? Why not ensure that the views of the most experienced prevailed by, well, making them the only views? We could have done that, I suppose, and had a quicker, more streamlined convention with everyone raucously applauding a few main charismatic presenters and people might even have left with more spirit and energy, and certainly not exhausted. But would we have laid a foundation for informed participation and growth, or would we have obstructed participation and lasting connection? Would we have generated what became RPS, or what would become something more like so many organizations of the past, flaming wonderfully for a time, but then burning out?

Bill, I want to try to get at what was different, at what perhaps was key to early RPS success by hearing about how you saw RPS as being different, how you saw it as overcoming past inadequacies that hadn’t earlier been overcome.

You know I remember pretty early on Cynthia and I were at a university to give a talk together. Maybe Cynthia and I can recreate it for you.

Great, by all means.

We did it as a kind of dialogue, I guess it was, where I opened it up by turning to Cynthia and asking, “Why have we had so much trouble winning a new society? To win is desired. To win is needed. Yet so often we fight and lose.”

And then Cynthia, I still remember you answered… “I think it’s because society debilitates us until we lack sufficient confidence to fight well. I think it’s because oppression distorts us until we lose our ability to cooperate and be strategic. Can’t you feel society’s roles bend us until we pick up habits that destroy our unity and clarity?

I replied: So we fail because we do bad things?

Cynthia continued: Yes, we sometimes get overly aggressive, other times we remain too passive. Sometimes we attack opponents to prove our worth or to defend our circumstances more than to win a new system. Often we find it easier to talk to people who like us and to avoid people who dislike us. Always we complain. We magnify our differences to boost our own formulations. Rarely do we sufficiently welcome new participants to hear what they bring. Bill, Why do you think we subvert ourselves?

Bill answered: I think fear of losing crushes us until we doubt we can win at all and we lose motivation to try. Confidence dissipates. When we become defeatist we prioritize pleasing friends or advancing our own narrow aims, keeping our small team intact, enjoying its camaraderie but not growing. We focus short term, not long term. We lack hope and we ridicule vision. We silo ourselves. We succumb to liberalism or we rail pointlessly at it.

We even disdain reform. We denigrate those who are not yet radical. We denigrate religion, sports, country music, and fast food. We celebrate professional and not working class life. I remember at that point Cynthia spoke to the students in the audience—I have a good memory for some things.

She said: “Some of you may resist what we are saying, resist admitting we have so many faults. Some of you may even castigate us for reporting them. You may think we are overly critical. But the truth is, if everything was already wonderful, how could we do any better? Be thankful we can find faults in our past to report because that gives us things you can correct in your futures!

I have to plead guilty. I remember getting angry at messengers reporting movement faults to spur improvement. I felt attacked by their words, but eventually I understood the necessity of finding flaws so we could overcome them. From then on, I sought to find and report fixable flaws. I got a lot of grief for it. But Bill, how did the presentation proceed?

I replied to Cynthia, RPS realized we had to give collective attention to previously untreated personal baggage. We allotted time for everyone to tell their stories. We listened. We cried and commiserated. We admitted and addressed problems. Confronting our problems we felt less alienated and more present. We felt compassion for each other and realized our fears weren’t ours alone.

Cynthia, can you explain why you went toward activism, but so many others didn’t until much later, when it was common to do so?

Honestly, no. Was it lucky happenstance? Or some little event that tweaked me off one path onto another? I don’t know. I suppose some just have to go first when they are relatively alone in doing so. But why someone in particular goes early, there are probably a thousand different reasons.

No commonality?

There are countless variables. We are born, nurtured, schooled, and have so many different preferences and experiences. Some pathos, some pain, some pleasure. But in normal times on balance we all expect the basics will persist. Despite all the variety, you like this, I like that. You suffer something, I enjoy it but suffer something else. And on and on. The basics persist. But then something changes and there is still endless diversity but instead of nearly everyone anticipating that the basics will persist, a few and then more, and eventually enough to thereafter themselves drive the trend, come to desire and believe things can change. We go into that process diverse, and we come out still diverse. But there is a commonality before the process, which is that we take for granted that current society is forever. And then there is a new commonality for the people you are asking about after the process, which is that we believe current society is the past. We seek and expect better. We fight for better. And the personal experiences of that transition vary a million ways. But the before and after, that repeats. Viewing a personal path is dramatic. And the unique personal paths matter most to each of us individually. They are our lives. And our telling those stories can inspire and instruct, for sure. But writ large, what yields the emergent commonality, what yields a better future, is the vision we reach, the desire we share, and our commitment to fight for it, together. Report our personal stories, yes, okay. Some fled pain. Some desired pleasure. But the star of it all is the common before and the different common after. The star is not our unique dramatic paths. The star is the wonderful attractor that is our imagination of a better world, our belief in a better world, our shared passion to win a better world. Report that. Focus on that.

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[Author’s Note: I hope readers will continue with this serialization’s weekly excerpts. The next excerpt’s interviewees, Andre Goldman, Bill Hampton, Senator Malcolm King, and Cynthia Parks, recall the first RPS convention and its immediate aftermath of chapter building. Which is to say they finally get into some of the nuts and bolts of seeking their revolutionary participatory society. While waiting for Excerpt 4, I hope you will find some time to use Z’s Community Forum to provide reactions, criticisms, advice, and whatever else you would like to share about this article so as to help improve the project. I also hope you will listen to the next RevolutionZ podcast episode which will offer diverse interjections of additional thoughts, questions, criticisms, reasons, and hopes regarding what you have just read.]

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